The Moment Of Truth For Airbnb As User’s Home Is Utterly Trashed • Hacker News Board

Re: The Moment Of Truth For Airbnb As User’s Home Is Utterly Trashed

#241

Post by StrawberryFrog » Thu, Jul 28, 2011, 8:18 PM UTC

westicle wrote: post #213

StrawberryFrog wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "we've made sure our customer is whole." When it gets to personal things like "found ... grandmother's jewelry" and "I don't have the mental energy to take those last few steps into my apartment. It's too creepy in there anyway." It's really hard to "make someone whole" with a cash payout. There's a lot of distress involved. It's not just a case of "TV was stolen, TV costs $500, here's $500". There's family heirloo…

"we've made sure our customer is whole." - why do you assume this statement refers to monetary compensation? Might be just me but i didn't read it like that at all.

It's hard to see what else you can do about destroyed family heirlooms.

Re: The Moment Of Truth For Airbnb As User’s Home Is Utterly Trashed

#242

Post by wnight » Fri, Jul 29, 2011, 10:35 AM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #231

wnight wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The risk has always been there. Have you ever seen/used a lock-pick gun? They'll open anything non-specialized in less than a second. Failing that, a lightly skilled (50h practice) lock-picker can open most household locks, even "secure" ones, in under fifteen minutes. Beyond that, the lock/deadbolt/wall is pretty weak. A sledge hammer will open almost any door in a single blow. Windows are essentially just big gapin…

Entry certainly isn't the problem. Authorized entry is, and in the case of AirBnB you've got a case where someone's contracted for entry, may have notified neighbors / building management that strangers will be present, etc. (though "hey, strangers will be present, would you mind looking in on things might have been another good practice for EJ). Your points on locks are very well made, and there's a long Internet (a…

> Your idea of "unethical" (to say the least of good business sense) is markedly different from mine.

I'm sure it'd be more profitable (and thus good business sense) to treat customers better based on the publicity they have. But do you really consider that ethical?

> Phone books? How archaic.

I wondered if someone would nitpick that. :)

But do you remember when lists of people's name and address were common and people weren't all chicken-little about it? I wonder if Terminator changed that with its phone-book directed killing spree.

Re: The Moment Of Truth For Airbnb As User’s Home Is Utterly Trashed

#243

Post by tokenadult » Fri, Jul 29, 2011, 6:05 PM UTC

pg wrote: post #157

watty wrote: post #5

Lets see if YC changes this title too...

Here's an algorithm you can use to predict that for all submissions. If the link here has the post's original title, we won't. If it doesn't, we'll replace it with the original title. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2814665

Here's an algorithm you can use to predict that for all submissions. If the link here has the post's original title, we won't. If it doesn't, we'll replace it with the original title.

I know of a counterexample from this week. The original submitter (I) posted an article I learned about from a local scientist with the original title

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2813270

and then during the subsequent discussion the HN title of the thread was changed to something that I don't think is a fair summary of the submitted article. (I don't know which curator did that, or which users flagged the thread, but I saw it happen after it was too late to edit the original submission.)

The original article is here and you can see its title:

http://independentsciencenews.org/news/23andme-disproves-its...

After edit: In view of the blanket policy statement to which I am responding, I'm especially curious about the recent exception I linked to.